LA
by TheDeathNoteFreak
Summary: L is having more trouble with the Kira case, and he needs someone better than the NPA to help him catch Kira. So who does he call in? An almost emotionless detective known only as A. LxOC
1. Chapter 1

**I do not own Death Note.**

"Gucci boots? That's _so _last year! Pick up an _Eighteen!_ for once in your life!" Two contact-covered eyes scanned the room for a response.

Dark brown orbs widened, but the man quickly recovered. He picked up a martini from the bar, and pretended to accidently spill the drink onto the front of the red haired girl's dress that was standing in front of him.

"Sorry! I just—I didn't mean to do that! Do—do you want a napkin or something?" He bent over to hastily pick up the glass shards from the drink, while staring at the black haired woman a few feet away who was talking to the man in front of her while swaying slightly.

The black haired woman turned, just as was expected, toward the bar to get a drink. "Are you staring at that _freak_ over there, when I'm sitting right in front of you?" The red head accused, pointing a painted finger nail at him with one hand while pushed some of her red hair behind her ear with the other. "Who wears sunglasses inside, _anyways_?"

"I don't know," Matsuda told her, shrugging as he handed her a napkin sitting on the bar. "Maybe she hasn't had the time to take them off—or wait, she looks like she's _American._ Maybe that's _all the rage _there?"

The black haired woman heard the key words easily, and stepped over to the two. "Do you have a problem with my sunglasses? Because they cost more than three times the amount of money than your dress did. Come on, everybody knows that _thing_ is just another scrap of fabric from _Deb_. You're really broke, aren't you? You know my Prada's are better than your "a.n.a.", also known as 'A New Approach' dress."

"How the heck would you know what type of dress this is?" The woman demanded.

She snorted. "Only because I'm the designer of _The New Era_ fashion collection representing Hatsuke Maori."

Matsuda could feel the excitement in his chest. '_That's A's alias! Damn it Matsuda, you're the guy!' _He coughed, making his face seem awkward. "Um, I have to go to the restroom, ladies; maybe I'll see you later this night."

"But, just one moment. This girl is wearing a red dress with red hair. Don't you think that _red curls _and _green silk_ go better together?"

Matsuda smiled, but shook his head. "I don't know much about fashion, so I can't answer that question as well as another woman could."

Shrugging, the woman turned away and walked into the crowd as Matsuda headed into the bathroom. '_She understood the code_!' He began to sing mentally.

/

The detective hustled into the stall, unbuttoning the black jacket she'd been wearing and hanging it up on the hook on the back of the door. Silently, she stepped out of the black round-toe heels she'd been wearing and tugged down the black pencil skirt to reveal a pink silk dress that had looked like a blouse before. Swapping the dark nylons she'd worn before for a lighter pair, she pulled the dress over her head and reversed it to expose a dark green silk. Yanking it over her head again, she shoved the black shoes in her silver purse and grabbed a pair of pointed silver sling-backs to jerk onto her feet.

After shoving the skirt into another section of her large purse, she reversed the jacket and put it on, the denim material hugging her waist slightly. She rolled up the sleeves, swapped her short black wig for a long scarlet one with numerous curls, changed her brown contacts out for green ones, and stepped out of stall with a make-up bag from her Louis Vuitton purse in hand.

She grabbed the black watch and put it on her wrist, making sure to set the time an hour earlier than it actually was. Then, grabbing a hand towel and running it under hot water, she wiped the make-up off of her face, and grabbed the brown mascara instead of the black she'd been wearing.

'A' applied two coats of light pink lip gloss, put nearly a mountain of brown eye liner and sparkly green eye shadow on after shoving her sunglasses onto the top of her head, dabbed paler blush than usual onto her cheeks, and put her sunglasses back on before exiting the restroom and moving back onto the dance floor.

/

Matsuda sat next to a brown haired girl, keeping his eyes peeled for his _real_ target. Aizawa had taken his seat on the other side of the bar long ago, and every once and a while he would check his watch, or tap his foot impatiently. '_What did he expect_?' Matsuda wondered. '_L told us that we couldn't make contact with her for at least an hour after we saw her the first time!'_

"Wha'd ya' want?" When Matsuda heard the bartender speaking next to him, he spun around; surprised to see a completely different girl from the one he'd seen before taking a seat next to him. She was pretty, but it was odd—she seemed just like every other girl, like you could see her a thousand times and never remember her features well. She had a green dress on, though—and some _damn_ vibrant red hair. _'You may as well just wait and see—_,'

"Martini, dry—no ice," she replied, turning away from the bartender toward Matsuda.

"Would you, by any chance, know what time it is?" The man could hear a hint of a Yankee accent to her speech. '_This is it—there's the first sentence for phase two.'_

Matsuda checked his watch, even though he already knew what time it was. "Eleven-seventeen. Do you have a curfew?"

She laughed slightly. It was musical, like bells. "No. I just think my watch is wrong, is all. It was an hour off. See?"

And indeed, the smaller, stalkier hand on the face of the black watch was just past the twelve, just as Matsuda expected. He smiled at the girl, and she pushed a strand of scarlet hair behind her ear.

He was the one to speak first. "So, if you don't have anything to do, did you want to come back to my apartment…?" Matsuda raised his left eyebrow for effect.

"Uhm…" Her smile dropped slightly, hesitation plain on her face. "I don't know how well my sister will be—my phone's dead, y'know?"

Matsuda whipped out his own, showing her the light blue face. "Use mine. I'll wait here—I shouldn't be snooping in on your conversation."

"My name's Jennifer, by the way. Jennifer Hayes." Her lips turned up further. "And thanks."

"Taro, Matsui." He handed her the phone. "Here—I'll wait right here."

**_A half an hour later._**

"You're good at acting," she commented bluntly, adjusting her sunglasses.

Matsuda was shocked at the way she had changed personalities so quickly. In the club, she'd been so _sweet._ And now—she wasn't. He stared at her blank face while she pulled off the wig—he was shocked to find out that all that red hair had been fake—to reveal a ridiculous amount of black hair, not with a bluish tint like before, but a dark color with an almost silver sheen to it. She'd changed miraculously in the back of the Mercedes Benz to a black suit with silver pin striping, and she'd pulled her long tresses into a medium-heigth pony-tail. But only one thing was still the same: the black pair of sunglasses, covering her eyes.

"You're good too." He paused. "But you've been doing this for Kami knows how many years, so, I guess it's expected that you're way better than me."

She didn't reply for the longest time, before she finally said, "L is acting weird—he's never used a code language before. He's either become tired or lazy, or he's trying to fool me with mood swings."

"What do you think is going on with him?" Matsuda asked, wondering how she managed a tone that blunt and monotone.

A pregnant pause. "I just think he's depressed." The cold aura slithered up Matsuda's spine.

Aizawa scoffed from the back of the Mercedes. "That would explain a lot of his behavior."


	2. Chapter 2

"A," he tested. He **thought** it felt alright on his tongue, and he tried it again. "A. I remember a friend of mine with the alias… You wouldn't know him, perhaps…?"

"Nope." She watched as he placed nine, ten, no eleven sugar cubes into his small cup of tea and blow on it before taking a small sip out of the porcelain cup. She took a small drink of hers, preferring the bitter taste of straight tea. "I'm sorry to ruin this conversation with business so early, but I don't allow others call me A. You understand, right _Ryuuzaki_?"

Making a small grunt, he looked upward at her. "What do you call yourself?"

"Annelise Camille Leigh," she told him, staring at the hotel furnishings. "Anne for short."

Ryuuzaki mused over the idea of a nickname, resting his right arm on the side of the patterned red chair. "I like the idea of a pet-name. Makes you just that more normal. I don't like the last name, though; it's too common. It's used as a first and middle name as well." He frowned slightly.

"So common that the great detective 'A' wouldn't make such a mistake as to choose it, no?" She quirked an eyebrow at him, but never turned to face him.

There was a slight amount of annoyance to his tone. "Reverse psychology. Rarely works, and doesn't do much, but can change one's opinion of another almost immediately. Nicely applied, I will admit." The black haired man took a sip of his highly sweetened tea, and then set it down temporarily on the silver tray on the wooden table next to him.

"You think reverse psychology is annoying, yet you insist on using a play script?"

Large, dark eyes look upward to a large pair of sunglasses. "Are you calling me… a _hypocrite? _Surely, you are odder than I by a large margin."

Anne let the bitter taste wash over her tongue. A moderate amount of annoyance reflected on her face, with her permission. "Oh?"

Ryuuzaki took a long breath, and began. "Yes; for starters, you pulled one hell of a quick change in that stall, right in front of cameras, while being even more suspicious by never allowing anyone a clear look at your face. Oh, and you didn't need to bother—you could have 'accidently' bumped into Matsuda instead of becoming a completely different person. Also, I gave you the job of writing our little play, and you did it quite well, of course—except for one moment, at the bar when you played the part of Jennifer Hayes. You introduced your name to 'Matsui' _after_ you agreed to go to his apartment. This is quite odd, due to the fact that any smart woman, such as Jennifer Hayes seemed to be, would not have done anything nor agreed to anything with a man she had no identity of. This cannot be excused by the fact that it was alcohol that made her slip, because cameras could prove that Jennifer Hayes had not had any alcohol. You made a mistake, Anne. A mistake so bluntly obvious that I honestly don't want to believe it. This is why, as you have undoubtedly come to realize, I don't believe that it was a mistake. It was a _signal_, wasn't it, Anne? A signal to your back-up, perhaps? To someone like, let's say, Jane Reid and her identical siblings Marie and Sarah?"

Anne smiled. "You're so blind, L. Of course it wasn't on purpose. I am just as good as you—you are well aware of this fact, and you are well aware that I was going to point this out. Yes, I told my darling followers that the moment I made a mistake in my speech they were to exit the area and that I knew Matsuda was there. Yes, I knew you had bugged the entire building, and would catch my error. But, to be blunt, I don't care. All three Reid members—who will go by Hope, Faith, and Amity Mare—are now doing what I alone should be attending right now, and I would of course take that risk with the CIA to have my very important business taken care of."

"Ah, so you knew the CIA was there," Ryuuzaki took a sip of his tea.

Anne copied his action. "Of course. I was with them, after all. I know how they work."

A long pause, then a new conversation. "How do _you_ work?"

"I don't mind schemes and plays, but I like to avoid them. I find that technology is a nice weapon, but everyone uses it these days and I don't like the idea of viruses. So, I use confrontations most of the time, after people have proved themselves of use. Of course I do it at a CIA building, or one of my buildings. It's clean, and _thorough_." Her pale lips were poised above the edge of the tea cup for the longest time before she finally took another sip.

L mulled over this information. "I see."

"And how do _you_ confront others?"

One of the detective's pale lips stuck out slightly. "Like this, most of the time."

A scoffed. "You certainly aren't one for manners, then. Dragging a person in blindfolded using more than twenty men and interrogating them? You're so polite—I'm amazed!" She told him sarcastically. "You're thorough, though. I _do_ like to be thorough…"

"I did invite you for tea afterward." He justified with a slight amount of annoyance.

"And you're still interrogating me, aren't you?"

Both detectives were silent for the longest time, occasionally taking a drink of the bitter (or sweet) tea. L stared bluntly at the woman in front of him, trying to memorize her features. Her sharp nose, her square jaw, and those eyes—eyes he couldn't see behind her sunglasses. Why was she wearing them indoors, anyway? Was it an American trend, as her script had suggested?

"Never look behind a woman's mask." She told him, adjusting the black frames as she continued to look out the window. '_Great. Peripheral vision_.' It was good for missions, but bad for him. '_She really has it all, doesn't she?'_ He thought blandly.

"Shall we go into the main room, then? I would like to introduce you to the Kira Investigation Team."

A shrugged, and got up from the couch she'd been sitting on. "That's the thorough thing, isn't it?"

L nearly rolled his eyes at her blunt tone as he left the hotel bedroom with Anne. Was she always so _thurough_?

/_ /-\

"Matsuda Touta, Matsui Taro as an alias." Ryuuzaki gestured to a kind, but slightly emotional man with wide and endearing eyes. Anne had seen those eyes before.

"Yagami Soichiro, chief of the NPA. Sohichi Yatsumoto as an alias." The kind-looking man with a professional expression raised his hand in acknowledgement.

"I'm Aizawa Shuichi— Aihara Suimo to the public." Aizawa nearly glared at Anne with his almond-shaped brown eyes. Behind her sunglasses, Anne felt her eyebrows raise. A family man, possibly? His protective gaze seemed to project it.

"Kanzo Mogi." The man seemed nice enough, and preferred to show his politeness through his dedication to capturing Kira as he shifted through a stack of papers. Anne liked him. "Kanichi Mochi's the alias."

"I am L, and as you know, I go by Ryuuzaki." She didn't need to look to recognize who the monotone voice came from.

'_How are you going to introduce yourself_?' Anne questioned mentally. '_You obviously can't scream like you pretended to do when you saw L. You won't act bubbly—your appearance doesn't match that. If you act too cold towards them, Matsuda will be shocked by your personality change if he hasn't been already and he'll convince the others to keep their guards up around you. So, do you act snotty? No, you were perfectly nice to L. God, you were never all that social… Screw it! Go only by what you know.'_

"Hello," she breathed, hopefully sounding calm. "I'm Annelise Camille Leigh, to the public at least. I go by Anne for short. We all know that I'm really an ex-CIA detective known as 'A', so I won't dwell on that fact too much. Right now, I'd like to ask you some questions about the Kira case."

She sounded… average, like she'd sounded with L. Not nice, really, but not guarded. She was a down-to-business kind of person. Like a reporter. She saw the detectives nod, and she paused before asking her first question.

"The first question calls for the first kill. I want the who, the what, the when, the where, the why, and the how…" She drifted over to a wall, and took out her tape measure. "This _might _be big enough…" She muttered.

Soichiro, from behind her, coughed and nodded as he read, "Kurou Otoharada, age 42. He held eight hostages, at a nursery school in the afternoon, as opposed to the other victims which were killed in the morning or in the night on school days. Motive for Kira killing him is factually unknown but can be guessed at—he's a criminal. He died of a heart attack."

"Alright. Who'd he kill next?"

It was Mogi who knew the answer next. "His name was Takuo Shibuimaru, his nickname in his motorcycle gang was 'Shibutaku', or 'Cool Taku.' He died of a heart attack, on an intersection of 57th and Marusuke ave." He paused. "He was sexually harassing a woman when he had a heart attack. Police were called by the owner of a book store moments later."

"I want the transcripts of that call, video footage of the store from top to bottom including the stuff from the buildings across it, and the medical records for both criminals. I like to be _thorough_, boys. I want the details on these two. When you have one killing, you look for a killer. Two killings need details in order to find a connection. Three killings, which Kira has definitely come to, calls for a _psychopath_. You know what I think about psychopaths, boys? I think it takes steps to become one. The potential is always there, but they have to be released from their sanity. I want to walk Kira up those stairs so that he can take those steps for one last time with a fine-tooth comb." Anne turned around, then, and looked directly at Ryuuzaki. "You know what else I think about psychopaths?"

"What?" Ryuuzaki asked, one eyebrow (A.N: Does he even have one?) raised at her.

She frowned at him. "I think that anyone who's trying to catch one needs a white board. That's why I'm ordering one."

Turning back to the police, she sighed, and ran through her directions one more time. "I didn't know the NPA was so sloppy. When I come back tomorrow, I want to know everything about Kurou Otoharada and this 'Shibutaku.' I need to know everything from whether they were abused or if they use _Crest _tooth paste or not… Got that? When you finish early, do it for each one of Kira's victims. If you finish that, and I'm hoping you do, I want you to profile Kira. Describe his actions, and give me your imaginations. How do you each personally think he would look? And boys, do a good job. This isn't just Kira's investigation by the big, scary 'A.' It's yours, too."

L sighed. Good lord. _Every victim. Every single one. _"Alright. They'll get it done, but I'm not sure when. I want _you_ to show me your papers on him. Tomorrow, if you would please."

"Oh, I don't do papers." Anne smiled at him. "I have photographic memory, Ryuuzaki. All I have to do is write it down on that board and I have it memorized. And I'm sorry, but it's all erased. Erased everywhere but up _here_, that is." She tapped her temple, smiling.

"I need to go back to my hotel room to get some stuff done. I'll be back tomorrow, and the new white board will be here as well." She waved, and was escorted by Watari to the suite across the hall to retrieve her things.

The men waved to her, their expressions mortified but the closest thing to disguised they could manage. She said goodbye to Watari, shook his hand, and left after a goodbye to the investigation team.

Matsuda waved a second time, his face just as mortified as Aizawa's. Mogi could swear the astonishment was plain on his usually indifferent face. Chief nearly cussed, the thought of Sachiko's horrifying face in his mind. Ryuuzaki sat, in the back of the room, an emotionless look plastered onto his features. They turned back to him.

Chaos ensued.

"Is she _**serious**_?" Aizawa demanded. "_**All **_of the _**victims**_?"

Chief uncomfortably backed him up. "Is it possible?" He asked warily. His wife… good lord, she'd throw away his leftover steak as well if he didn't come home for dinner…

"I can't cram all that into a _year_, let alone a day!" Matsuda cried, his wide eyed gaze penetrating everyone but L's gaze.

Mogi, for once, spoke of his own desire. "I have to go home—I can't stay here all night. I don't work well without sleep, I can assure you of that. Kira has killed thousands of criminals, hasn't he? Isn't it a little ridiculous to think we can get this all done?"

Aizawa paled at his next thought. "She's CIA, right? What is the _**USA**_doing for her?"

Ryuuzaki frowned slightly. "I honestly don't know. I'll do my research, though. Asking us to do this all in one day really is absurd without help; I'll have to discuss things—,"

'_Mada riaru idearu no hazama ni ite gisei no kase ni ashi wo torarete mo  
Afureru shoudou osae kirenai tsuyoku motomeru kokoro ga aru kara…'_

L nearly glared at the silver piece of technology as it vibrated on the mahogany wood of the hotel coffee table. His dark eyes narrowed with annoyance at it as it continued on in a reckless, predictable verse. He put his tea abruptly down on the end table beside his chair, and looked bluntly at Matsuda.

Shivering as he got the roughly transmitted message from the detective, he picked up the phone and spoke into the tiny speaker. "Hello?"

"_Hi!_" The voice coming back at the detective was cute, and unfamiliar. "_It's Ai! Tee-hee; that rhymes! How are you doing, Ryuuzaki? I thought you were so CUTE_ _when we were at the Savoy hotel—that embarrassed look on your face when you saw me in my underwear when I'd just gotten out of the shower was so KAWAII! Oh, and when you started to do that thing where you—,_"

"Ugh… Uh, this isn't Ryuuzaki! I'm a friend of his… ugh, do you want to talk to him?" Matsuda asked frantically as he tried to keep the blush off of his cheeks when she spoke back to him. "What? Oh, my name's Matsuda Touta…" Another cute response. "Okay, yeah. Here he is."

Matsuda hastily held out the silver device out to the blank-faced detective. "It's—It's for you."

L took a hold of the antennae and pulled the phone. "Who is it?"

Matsuda could hear someone talking somewhere over the phone lines.

"Are you serious?" The detective asked dubiously.

More exited chatter came back to him.

"I'll meet you there." He decided.

'_Is it a DATE?' _Matsuda thought incredulously. '_Isn't L supposed to stay away from love? Isn't it supposed to be a distraction… or is it like a strength? Where will they go? A movie? A restaurant? A HOTEL!'_

L hung up, and turned to Matsuda. "Anne says you're a stupid detective."


End file.
